All - as a reminder the meeting is TONIGHT at 6:30 at the Public Safety Building (Police/Fire department). It is imperative that we get as much representation as possible to attend. Below please find the letter that was just sent to us. As you can see, the plan is to take care of the poor Mansfield trucking companies and leave all of us with homes that start shaking at 3:45 am. This is unacceptable!! Please join us tonight and please inform your neighbors also! OAK STREET TRUCK EXCLUSION AND SPEED CONTROL Requests for these have come up many times in Foxborough. The State requirement is that in order to provide a truck exclusion for one route, there must be a thorough engineering study done to identify a suitable alternative route. If the alternative route requires routing through another town or city, that town or city must agree to the routing. Bob Swanson, the Town Engineer and I have determined that a large proportion of the trucks using Oak Street as a cut-through route to I-95 at Mechanic Street come from businesses at or adjacent to National Lumber in Mansfield. They go north on Oakland/Summer Street to East Street to Cocasset Street to Oak Street. The only alternative route would require us to regulate their start direction in Mansfield, forcing them to travel south. If that happened, they would have to take the narrow one-way road along the railroad in Mansfield, make the 110 degree left turn in front of the railroad station, make the 90 degree right turn onto Main Street Mansfield, make another 90 degree right turn onto Route 106 and finally a 90 degree right turn onto Route 140. All this route lies within the Town of Mansfield. This is the apparent reason why they currently go north onto Summer Street, just to avoid the circuitous route south. I can’t find any other suitable route that doesn’t cause problems for some other Foxborough residents. For example, if they don’t use Cocasset Street, the could go north on East Street, but that requires routing into Sharon to get back to I-95. To exclude Oak Street from the northerly route, trucks would need to continue north on Cocasset and take Chestnut to Mechanic. The turn onto Chestnut is difficult by I-95, the street is very narrow with children using the sidewalk to get to school and the rear entrance to the Ahern School is on that road, along with a bunch of residents and the traffic signal at Mechanic Street. If Chestnut were also excluded they would continue on Cocasset to Pleasant and take that to Mechanic – more residents and a narrow road surface for trailers. If Pleasant were excluded they would next take Maple – more narrow pavement – and if that were excluded they would continue to the Common and take the right onto Mechanic Street. Pursuant to answering complaints about speed and truck traffic on Oak Street, I have had a qualified Traffic Engineering firm prepare quotes for preparation of the engineering studies necessary for submittal of these two requests to MassDOT Highway Division and Registry of Motor Vehicles Division, as required by Chapter 81. The Truck Exclusion study will cost $ 22,000 and the speed study will cost $ 4,000. There are a lot of requirements for each of these studies, and the outcome of both studies may be that to achieve the resident’s desired results would not be approved, or, in the case of the speed study, might result in a higher speed limit than the State Uniform Speed Law of 35 mph in a residential district. In other words, we would have spent $ 26,000 scarce highway dollars fruitlessly. Our alternative traffic and improvement plan for Oak Street is to transfer the water services and hydrants that are now attached to an asbestos cement (ac) water main along a small portion (approximately 3,000 feet) of Oak Street over to an existing ductile iron water main, followed by abandonment in place of the ac pipe. Once completed, we will do a Cape Seal of the entire roadway and restripe the new pavement using the same chicane striping that was used successfully to control speeding on North Street last year. This striping will narrow the lanes to 12 feet in width between the chicanes and 10 feet at the narrowest point of the chicanes, which psychologically works to slow down traffic. In addition, the new striping will create six foot shoulders on both sides of the street, making the shoulders suitable for bicycle use and giving us a wide area for snow removal during heavy snow events. With the above improvement we could post lower speed limit advisory signs, like the 25 mph signs we placed on Payson Road. While enforcement would still require an excess of 35 mph, most drivers cannot distinguish between a Regulatory Sign and a Warning Sign, and some would likely travel at the lower speed advisory like they do on Payson Road, for the most part. Of course we will always have some violators. The only solution for that is enforcement. We plan to do this work as soon as we complete the transfers of the water services, which will commence in August.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 14:36:28 +0000
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